


Not Getting Any Younger

by meanoldauthor



Series: Mean Old Lady [7]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 14:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6198283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old age is rare in the wastes, and wisdom even more so</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Getting Any Younger

It had rained, in that quiet, cool moment before sunrise. It had been a modest fall compared to places she’d been, but Adal drank in the damp scent of it, chair creaking under her. “Can’t even remember the last time we got any wet,” she said.

Raul nodded, settling his own chair against the side of the car. She looked away as he lit up a cigarette, the light almost blinding in the dimness. “Months. More. Old as I am, boss, could probably still count on one hand how many times it’s rained here.”

She accepted the cigarette he offered, taking a cautious draw. Mellow, almost sweet, very different from the prewar things she scrounged up. “S’good. Where’d you get them?”

“Casa Tejada Special. Jacal Tejada,” he corrected, glancing back at his shack. “Grown, harvested, and cured by yours truly, and rolled on the thighs of only the finest ghoul mechanics.”

“S’good,” she murmured, looking at the horizon. Orange streaks were creeping over it. “Probably hard finding a decent ghoul mechanic around here.”

He huffed, making offended noises, but she could see his grin from the corner of her eye. It faded as they watched the sky, lightening by degrees. He drew a breath, preparing to speak, before pressing his lips thin and taking another puff of smoke.

Adal waited. A few clouds had even formed, glowing like embers above the sunrise. “Ever wonder if you’ll see something like this again?”

He exhaled, smoke leaking out of the hole where his nose was. She tried not to grimace. “Every day, boss.”

She watched the ground in the growing light. Raul lit another cigarette.

“Been eatin’ you, too?”

Ash had built up on the tip of her smoke. She tapped it off. “’Makes you say that?”

“Wake me up at the asscrack of dawn lookin’ like you haven’t slept in days, saying you wanna sit out in the cold and damp and make my knees extra creaky. Can’t say you ever been the reflective type, boss.”

“C’mon, old man, you were already up.” She looked away, watching one head of his brahmin calf watching her, chewing cud. The other was napping. “Can’t tell me you never felt you made the wrong call.”

“Everything about you’s a bad idea, lady. Should have gone back to the vaquero life just because you thought otherwise.” He glowered at her. She stuck her tongue out and waved him away. “Didn’t even want to explain, either.”

She stubbed the butt of her cigarette in the dirt, taking her time to straighten up. “I ever tell you much about my folk? Walker?”

“Can’t say you have. I’d say I’m gettin’ nosy back at you, boss, but uh,” he waved his hand in front of his face.

Adal tried to laugh, but it only came out as a weak _pff_. “Had some funny ideas about ghouls. Walker were never part of a Vault, or even a civilian shelter. Saw some of the first people to turn, the ones right near the blast. Radiation, right, but our histories had it that they deserved it somehow. Were too wicked to die, doomed themselves to wander like that forever.”

“Thanks, boss. You should give seminars.”

“I ain’t done.” He passed her another cigarette, waited for her to light it. “Most were feral, the shock of the change was too much, or something. Wasn’t for months, at least, that some of the normal ghouls started showing signs.

“One of ‘em was Chien, our first elder. He actually knew a thing or two about surviving on your feet, so they all looked away when the rot started. He walked us—not _us_ us, I ain’t that old—but the people who’d be Walker all over one side of the country and up into the mountains, trying to figure out if anywhere had survived.”

The curve of the sun was peeking over the horizon. “Camped there a while, up in the thin air. That site was our Crossroads, right up until there weren’t any Walker left to return. He took a band, set them out to see what was left of the coast. Stories say his skin had all burned away by then, wore a bear-hide hood to keep the sun off. He found places that lived, yeah, but they wouldn’t have the Walker. Just like how we got pushed aside, left to die by people in the other shelters just because we shared blood with the Old World’s enemies. But Chien Walked us on, taught us how to live, gave us hope, even while his body gave up on him. He Walked his band all across the West, looking for someone to help us. Nine Walks, it took him, twenty seven years to quarter the mountains to the sea, after uncounted years on the east half of the land. He came back to the Crossroads, tired and bowed, by then the only Walker left who had seen the bombs fall.

“So Ancient Chien, the ghoul, went out alone in the wild. He went to speak with the same spirit that pushed old America to reject us, made her people turn, made the land fight us. _Ama_ , we called her.” It was bright enough to make out color now, and the ground had a suspicious hint of green among the weeds and raw earth. “Kind of god you swear _at_ , rather’n to, and not real loud in case she hears. But he came back to all the waiting Walker, said Ama had spoken to him. That he’d done his work. Mean old Mother had tested us tough, and Chien had taught us to fight back. The Walker knew their ways, that their place wasn’t in a town or a vault or any single stretch of land. We were the only free people left, by their teachings, able to move with the wind and live and thrive wherever we Walked.”

Raul shaded his eyes against the sunlight. More colors were peeking out of the earth, the low fog that had formed burning away. “Headed off to the old ghoul’s home, did he?”

“Hey, did I ever interrupt you?”

“Yes you did, boss.”

Adal stretched her feet out in front of her. “Nobody knows if he was scared of going feral around us, or if Ama put some other word in his ear, or if he was just bored. But the story is, he had taught us all he knew, and went on to teach what he could in the rest of the Waste. He’d been kept alive that long for a reason, seeing us well. Saved, to save us.”

Clusters of tiny flowers were blooming in the dust, woken by the meager rain. Insects, birds small enough to be mistaken for them, flitted from one to the next. “Walker always had respect for the old, that started well before the war. But if you got old in the Waste, you earned it. A person lives two hundred years, you wound up a ghoul and you kept your mind, no way it was a lucky roll of fate. You were saved. Someone, something thought you had people to teach further on down the road.”

The sun was well up, the ground a riot of color and life. They watched it, silent, the air warming. Raul sighed, nodded to himself. “Pretty.”

“Pretty,” she said.

It wasn’t long before the sun got truly hot. The flowers were already fading, the insects still scrambling to ensure the next bloom. Adal stood, pinching out the end of the cigarette. “Welp. Got places to be, I think.”

“Yeah. Better things to do than bake out here.” Raul stood with her, brushing imagined dust off his coveralls. “Lemme grab you a tin of that tobacco for the road, huh?”

“Hey, yeah. Appreciate it.” She followed him back to the shack.

“You’re paying for the next one,” he said, pushing the door open. 

She leaned on the jamb as he rummaged through a drawer. “No discount for a friend?”

Raul pressed the tin into her hand, didn’t let go when she closed her fingers around it. “Only discount I offer is a senior one, and when you’re as old as I am, boss, takes you a long time to qualify.” He nodded as he let go. “Take me up on it sometime.”

“No rush, old man.” She met his eyes as she pocketed it. “But I’ll see you then.”


End file.
